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Black Representation at Heart of Louisiana Redistricting Battle

“In a democracy, the number of voters you have should determine the number of representatives you can elect,” James Gilmore, of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, told VOA. “But that’s not the case in Louisiana and many other U.S. states. The latest redistricting maps are proof of that.”

Redistricting is the decennial process in which congressional districts are redrawn to reflect changes in the population as determined by the U.S. census.

“The strength of the system is that it balances the size of districts so that they all have roughly equal populations,” explained Robert Collins, professor of urban studies and public policy at Dillard University in New Orleans. “That, in theory, means everyone has equal influence with their vote.”

But how those maps are drawn can benefit or disadvantage certain groups and the political parties they support. Manipulating the contours of congressional districts to give a political party an advantage at the ballot box — and, ultimately, greater numbers in the U.S. House of Representatives — is known as gerrymandering, a practice almost as old as America itself.

Louisiana’s Republican-led Legislature devised new congressional maps that sparked an outcry from Democrats and voting rights groups. Republicans insist they balanced multiple considerations fairly.

“I took our population, I took our geography of the state, I took our communities of interest, I took the will of the public, the will of the Legislature, and I balanced all of that with the law,” said Representative John Stefanski, the lead Republican in the Louisiana House’s redistricting efforts.

But opponents insist the resulting maps don’t accurately reflect changes in the state’s demographics, particularly the growth of its minority population.

“Louisiana is now made up of one-third Black residents, and the Black population has been a principal driver of the state’s overall growth,” said Liza Weisberg, voting rights staff attorney at Southern Poverty Law Center. “But the new redistricting maps don’t meaningfully increase opportunities for Black voters to elect candidates of their choosing. That’s a broken system.”

The system

How political maps are drawn also has important implications for residents other than representation in Washington. The delineation of state and local government districts can bring consequences.

“African Americans make up more than 50% of the population of Baton Rouge, but the way the maps are drawn, we’re still outnumbered by white Republicans on the school board, on City Council and throughout local government,” said Gilmore, who is African American. “So it’s no wonder those boards and councils keep voting to have the new schools, new hospitals, new housing, new public transportation — I can go on forever — put in the part of town that happens to be white and Republican. Meanwhile, when my mother had a stroke, I had to drive her 26 minutes to the nearest hospital and carry her inside myself. If redistricting was done fairly, we’d have fair representation and we couldn’t be treated like this.”

Redistricting became a requirement in 1967, with the passage of the Uniform Congressional District Act. The law required states to use the U.S. census, conducted every 10 years, to ensure voting districts consisted of approximately the same number of residents.

“Before the 1960s, you might have had one state senator representing a district of 10,000 residents, while another senator in the same state represented 100,000 residents,” said Robert Hogan, professor and chair of the political science department at Louisiana State University.

This ensures every resident’s vote can have the same strength. But redistricting has also been used to both consolidate and dilute political power.

That’s because it often falls to a state’s legislature to draw redistricting maps. Though the legislature can pass that responsibility to a less partisan committee, the majority party typically chooses to do this consequential work itself.

“Historically, the process has been used by the majority party as a way to further consolidate power,” Weisberg told VOA.

That power is on full display in Louisiana, where even though nearly 4 out of 10 voters cast their ballots for Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, Democrats hold only one of the state’s six seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“It’s a weakness of the redistricting system,” Hogan said. “The minority party suffers at the hand of the majority party that draws districts in a way that ultimately reduces the number of seats their opponent can win. Republicans want to keep their five incumbent seats rather than having to give another to Democrats.”

Hogan says while the strategy is meant to help the majority party at the expense of the opposition party, it’s not just the minority party that feels its effects.

“The redistricting process can also be harmful to racial and ethnic minority populations as well,” he said.

Majority-minority districts

In a majority-minority district, Black Americans and other minority groups make up the majority of a district’s electorate. Louisiana currently has only one majority-minority district, but when the 2020 census revealed that the African American population in Louisiana had risen to one-third of the state’s total population, there was hope that redistricting would add a second.

This, supporters of a second majority-minority district said, would allow Black voters to choose representatives to both the Louisiana State Legislature and the U.S. Congress who more fairly represented their growing numbers in the state.

The idea had the backing of Louisiana’s Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, but not that of key Republican state lawmakers.

Democrats, voting rights advocates and many African Americans were infuriated with what emerged.

“More than two dozen versions of maps that included a second majority-minority district were presented to the Legislature, and Republicans rejected all of them,” Nora Ahmed, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, told VOA.

Republicans have defended the maps they ultimately selected, saying Louisiana’s African American population is spread out across rural parts of the state. If they had created a second majority-minority district, they said, it could have weakened the influence Black voters currently have at the ballot box.

During a special redistricting session last month, Republican state Senator Sharon Hewitt called the desire for a second majority-Black district “a great risk,” alleging it would reduce the percentage of minority voters in Louisiana’s only current majority-minority district from 61% to 53%.

Some dispute Hewitt’s assertions.

“At the time of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Black majority congressional districts had to consist of 80% to 90% Black voters,” Dillard University’s Collins explained. “That’s no longer the case. With modern voting patterns, if a district is between 48% to 50% Black, it gives a fair opportunity to elect an African American candidate because getting some crossover votes from white voters is now more possible.”

At a standoff

Last month, the Louisiana State Legislature concluded its special redistricting session by passing a set of maps that left opponents unhappy with the projected level of minority representation.

“They could have passed a map that, after decades, finally gave fair representation to African American voters,” Gilmore said. “But they didn’t, and we’ll have to pay the price while those who are represented in government get the benefits.”

But the battle isn’t over. Earlier this month, Edwards vetoed the map creating the state’s six seats in the U.S. House of Representatives on the ground that it did not include a second majority-minority district.

“This map is simply not fair to the people of Louisiana and does not meet the standards set forth in the federal Voting Rights Act,” Edwards said in a statement.

Similar maps creating voting districts to determine representatives to the state Legislature were not vetoed, however. Edwards said that even though he felt those maps were not sufficiently representative, he didn’t think the Legislature had the time to redraw them during a busy legislative session.

Advocacy groups have already filed lawsuits against the maps, saying they dilute the voting strength of minorities.

Hewitt disagreed.

“Nothing in the [Voting Rights Act] establishes a right to have members of a protected class elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population,” she said during last month’s redistricting debate.

While Republicans attempt to get the votes to overturn Edwards’ veto, opponents hope the courts will intervene to ensure fairly drawn district maps ahead of midterm elections in November, when all seats in the U.S. House of Representatives will be decided.

Whether drawn by the Legislature or the court system, Gilmore says the consequences for minority voters will be substantial.

“Our ability to vote for officials who represent us hangs in how these maps are drawn. I hope they do the right thing here, because it will affect a whole lot of people.”
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Biden Budget to Trim $1 Trillion from Deficits Over Next Decade 

President Joe Biden intends to propose a spending plan for the 2023 budget year that would cut projected deficits by more than $1 trillion over the next decade, according to a fact sheet released Saturday by the White House budget office. 

In his proposal, expected Monday, the lower deficits reflect the economy’s resurgence as the United States emerges from the pandemic, as well as likely tax law changes that would raise more than enough revenue to offset additional investments planned by the Biden administration. It’s a sign that the government’s balance sheet will improve after a historic burst of spending to combat the coronavirus. 

The fading of the pandemic and the growth has enabled the deficit to fall from $3.1 trillion in fiscal 2020 to $2.8 trillion last year and a projected $1.4 trillion this year. That deficit spending paid off in the form of the economy expanding at a 5.7% pace last year, the strongest growth since 1984. But inflation at a 40-year high also accompanied those robust gains as high prices have weighed on Biden’s popularity. 

For the Biden administration, the proposal for the budget year that begins October 1 shows that the burst of spending helped to fuel growth and put government finances in a more stable place for years to come as a result. One White House official, insisting on anonymity because the budget has yet to be released, said the proposal shows that Democrats can deliver on what Republicans have often promised without much success: faster growth and falling deficits. 

Republicans focus on inflation

But Republican lawmakers contend that the Biden administration’s spending has led to greater economic pain in the form of higher prices. The inflation that came with reopening the U.S. economy as the closures from the pandemic began to end has been amplified by supply chain issues, low interest rates and, now, disruptions in the oil and natural gas markets because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky pinned the blame on Biden’s coronavirus relief as well as his push to move away from fossil fuels. 

“Washington Democrats’ response to these hardships has been as misguided as the war on American energy and runaway spending that helped create them,” McConnell said last week. “The Biden administration seems to be willing to try anything but walking back their own disastrous economic policies.” 

Biden inherited from the Trump administration a budget deficit that was equal in size to 14.9% of the entire U.S. economy. But the deficit starting in the upcoming budget year will be below 5% of the economy, putting the country on a more sustainable path, according to people familiar with the budget proposal who insisted on anonymity to discuss forthcoming details. 

The planned deficit reduction is relative to current law, which assumes that some of the 2017 tax cuts signed into law by former President Donald Trump will expire after 2025. The lower deficit totals will also be easier to manage even if interest rates rise. Still, Biden’s is offering a blueprint for spending and taxes that will eventually be decided by Congress and could vary from the president’s intentions. 

Economy expands

The expected deficit decrease for fiscal 2022 reflects the solid recovery in hiring that occurred in large part because of Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. The added jobs mean additional tax revenue, with the government likely collecting $300 billion more in revenues compared to fiscal 2021, a 10% increase. 

Still, the country will face several uncertainties that could reshape Biden’s proposed budget, which will have figures that don’t include the spending in the omnibus bill recently signed into law. Biden and U.S. allies are also providing aid to Ukrainians who are fighting against Russian forces, a war that could possibly reshape spending priorities and the broader economic outlook. 
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Reports: Justice Thomas’ Wife Urged Overturning 2020 Election

Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, sent weeks of text messages imploring White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to act to overturn the 2020 presidential election — furthering then-President Donald Trump’s lies that the free and fair vote was marred by nonexistent fraud, according to copies of the messages obtained by The Washington Post and CBS News. 

The 29 messages the pair exchanged came in the weeks after the vote in November 2020, when Trump and his top allies were still saying they planned to go to the Supreme Court to have its results voided. 

The Post reported that on November 10, three days after the election and after The Associated Press and other news outlets declared Democrat Joe Biden the winner, Virginia Thomas, a conservative activist, texted to Meadows: “Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!! … You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.” 

Copies of the texts — 21 sent by her, eight sent in reply by Meadows — were provided to the House select committee investigating the deadly insurrection that saw a mob of mostly Trump supporters overrun the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The AP attempted to get the same information from the committee, but it declined to comment. 

The texts do not directly reference Thomas’ husband or the Supreme Court. But she has previously admitted to attending the Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the Capitol riot. Virginia Thomas also has previously denied conflicts of interest between her activism and her husband’s place on the high court. 

Still, the messages show she was urging the top levels of the Trump administration to try to throw out the 2020 election results, and even offering coaching to Meadows on how best to do so. Thomas urged lawyer Sidney Powell, who promoted false claims about the election, to be “the lead and the face” of the Trump legal team. 

Meadows’ attorney, George Terwilliger III, told the Post and CBS that neither he nor Meadows would comment on individual texts, adding, “nothing about the text messages presents any legal issues.” 

Justice Thomas, 73, has been hospitalized for treatment from an infection. He and his wife did not respond to the news outlets’ request for comment. 

In February 2021, the Supreme Court rejected challenges to the election. Justice Thomas dissented, calling the ruling not to hear arguments in the case “befuddling” and “inexplicable.” 

In a November 5 message to Meadows, Virginia Thomas quoted material that had appeared on right-wing fringe websites: “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.” 

In a subsequent text the next day, Thomas wrote to Meadows, “Do not concede.” 

The messages also suggest that Meadows was willing to continue pursuing ways to overturn the election. He replied to one message from Thomas: “I will stand firm. We will fight until there is no fight left. Our country is too precious to give up on. Thanks for all you do.” 

The texts between Thomas and Meadows stop after Nov. 24, 2020. But the committee received another message sent on Jan. 10, 2021, four days after the mob attack on the Capitol, according to the Post and CBS. 

“We are living through what feels like the end of America,” Thomas wrote to Meadows in it. 

 
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